Algonquin Books Blog

While the geographic scope of Algonquin has certainly expanded in the last thirty years, we take great pride in the Southern literary talent that became the cornerstone of our house. From May 14 to May 27, you can purchase seven Algonquin classics for only $1.99 each. So stir up a pitcher of mint julep, settle into that porch swing, and enjoy our Southern storytellers.

“When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.” So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kay Gibbons’ unforgettable debut novel, one that received high praise from both Eudora Welty and Walker Percy.

In a corner of the rural South blistering with hatred and petty meanness, Nathan and Roy must hide their love for each other from friends, church, and family. But that comes easily to Nathan, who is used to keeping secrets. A stunningly brave work of first love—between two adolescent boys who sustain each other in a world of domestic disintegration.

Everything happens the summers Sugar Mecklin turns ten, eleven, and twelve, around the same time his father tells him that “the Delta is filled up with death.” And death does turn up all over the place, but Sugar is an optimist, and magic might prove once and for all to be real. This dark, hilarious, and affecting work is proof that Nordan is one of the South’s very finest writers.

Clover is a ten-year old black girl from a small town in South Carolina whose life changes forever when her father dies and she is forced to forge a new relationship with the white stepmother she hardly knows. A beautiful, trenchant story of family lost and found, Clover is a unique and heartfelt reading experience for all ages.

Jo Spencer is a girl who knows what to be and how to be it—straight-A student, cheerleader, May Queen, popular and cute and virginal, and in perfect control. But halfway through her first year in college in the early seventies, her carefully normal life explodes, and she comes completely undone.

Nearing fifty, Joe Ransom won’t slow down, not in his pickup, not with a gun and certainly not with women. But all the fast living in Mississippi won’t quell the hunger Joe can’t name. At fifteen, Gary Jones is already slipping through the cracks. Part of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, he’s desperate for a way out. He finds it in Joe. Together they’ll follow a twisting map to redemption—or ruin.

Clyde Edgerton’sRaney

The story of the first two years, two months, and two days of a modern southern marriage. Raney is a Free Will Baptist. Charles is an Episcopalian. Raney’s views—on sex, race relations, child rearing—are, um, conservative. Charles’s are a little more liberal. Can this marriage be saved?